Dan McKellar reveals what helped Leicester Tigers seal come-from-behind win over Stormers

Leicester Tigers head coach Dan McKellar revealed that his half-time pep-talk against the Stormers had the desired effect as it helped his side to stage a come-from-behind victory in their Champions Cup opener on Sunday.

The Stormers fielded a shadow team, with several of their first choice players staying behind in Cape Town, but despite being overwhelming underdogs, they delivered a competitive performance at Welford Road and held a 17-10 lead at half-time.

The Tigers needed a response and McKellar reminded them of that in no uncertain terms at the interval and they came out firing in the second half and eventually claimed a 35-26 win.

Handre Pollard leads the way

Springbok fly-half Handre Pollard led the way for the home side as he contributed 20 points courtesy of a try, three penalties and three conversions.

McKellar said: “I don’t do it that often these days and it’s not about yelling and screaming, it’s about understanding we needed to shift in and around attitude and enthusiasm and effort areas.

“Someone’s going to drop a ball every now and then or throw a bad pass, I can live with that, but I can’t live with being out-enthused.

“We got some set-piece dominance, we kicked better, it was tough conditions out there.

“I know everyone wants to see us throwing the ball around and I thought again there were some good moments of really good passages and skill and good play, but we just executed our game plan.

“We managed to put them under pressure with our kicking game, through our defence and through our set-piece.

“At this time of the year, that’s what’s going to win games.”

Leicester raced into the lead after Solomone Kata crossed for their opening try, but the Stormers struck back with five-pointers from Keke Morabe and Courtnall Skosan which gave them a deserved lead at the break.

The men from the Cape continued to impress after half-time but Leicester soon took control of proceedings and another five-pointer from Kata, as well as tries from Pollard and Josh Bassett, sealed the home side’s win.

Stormers head coach John Dobson said: “I’m thrilled with the effort and the physicality, all the stuff we wanted.

Disappointed to leave empty-handed

“We’re probably disappointed with the way we didn’t get anything out of it in the end.

“It’s a bit curious because there’s so much pride for the performance – there’s a lock [Dylan Sjoblom] who arrived and joined us this week on Tuesday – but there’s disappointment not to get a point out of it.

“I’m not sure our best team would have done much better, but for the competition and for Leicester we’d like to be at full noise, so it is a pity.

“It’s so important for us to be part of this competition in South Africa, it means so much to us.

“It’s great that we fought. I think if we’d got rolled over 44-3, we would have been the side to have damaged the competition.

“You could see there was some talent in there.”

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